I had two friends come to visit and work with me for a month, and I'll party excuse my sad lack of blogging for their visit. I shall try and catch up on our mutual adventures in the mean time!
(a view of the lake Issyk Kul our first night)
Brian, Michael, Kyle, and myself decided to take a several day trip our to Lake IssykKul. Kyle was going mostly for vacation and was hoping to do a little investigative fieldwork while there. As usual, I was extremely thankful to have Kyle, our Russian speaking savior, along with us! We follow him around much like sad peeping chicks following a hen. After a little discussion and guidebook reading we settled on the town of Tamga on the south shore. The four of us took a taxi over to the bus station and got seats on a marshutka going to Karakol. The only remaining seats were the back row bench seats, so yet again we experienced the lack of air, high temperatures, and delight of many decibels of music blasting out of speakers directly overhead. The drive is pretty, through a canyon through the Kyrgyz Range, with a stop at a stalovyah (Russian style cafeteria, that generally seem to have good and inexpensive food). Reaching Tamga we asked the driver to stop (by we I mean Kyle), and disembarked in the middle of the small town.
Tamga is a small town or village just over halfway along the southern boarder of Issyk Kul. It is a primarily Russian town right to the West of the larger, and more Kyrgyz town, Barksoon. With an office for Kumtor, many of the towns male residents work at and in the gold mine. Following recommendations, we located the Tamga Guest House near the western edge of town. I would highly recommend it to other visitors! The rooms were perfect, with two twin beds in each and there were shared bathrooms that even had hot showers. The whole back yard was a giant garden with many flowering fruit trees, flowers, a pond, and a ping pong table we availed ourselves on.
The next morning, after a lovely breakfast, we wandered into the central part of town, through it, and to the south to where the graveyard overlooked the town and the lake. The cemetery is split into two parts, one the Russian Orthodox, and the other the Muslim section. Both were beautiful, although very different. The Russian Orthadox crosses have a second crossbar on them that is slanted, as they believe this was the form of the cross. There are many brightly colored silk flowers in this section. The Muslim section has huge piles of earth on each grave and a fence around the base often. The richer graves have earthenware constructions towering over them. On both sides, as its a Russian tradition, the gravestone often have very detailed well done portraits of the individual. This was also the first place we observed a neat little cone shaped parasitic plant growing!
We then wandered into the hills. There were inundated snail fossils. And by abundant, I mean filling every section of stone we gathered. I knew they were fossils because of the the snails present is a type I know is only aquatic! These are sediments of Pliocene and Pleistocene age from the lake. Issyk Kul, meaning hot lake in Kyrgyz, is the second largest alpine lake after lake Titikaka in Peru. The name derives from its slightly salty chemistry preventing it from freezing in the winter. The Kyrgyz legend states that a beautiful young woman met a young man on a white horse who she instantly fell in love with. He gave her a ring to protect herself and said he would return for her. Meanwhile a rich and greedy king heard of her beauty and wanted her for his harem. She refused so eventually he kidnapped her and gave her many presents. She still refused to marry him and refused to even eat coked in his castle. When she died her tears spread from the castle and soon covered it in water. The tears did not stop until they had filled the huge basin, leaving behind the lake to this day. The Kyrgyz believe the lake is slightly salty because it is her tears.
Wandering farther and farther up into the hills we saw many flowers, insects, snail fossils, sheep, you name it. Other than vertebrate fossils. Those we saw not even a scrap or hint of. The view was lovely, high mountains on one side and the expanse of the lake on the other. I followed the ridge line up and up hear Becky Dorsey "get high and stay high" in my head. Having not seen Brian or Michael in a very long time I headed back and eventually saw them, catching up to them only near the graveyard. As we heading back into the town a light rain began to fall. We stopped at a small store to get ice cream and wine. I was very proud of myself managing to say "dvah crasney vino", or two red wine in Russian. The shopkeeper was very sweet and sold me the wine I had managed to order in broken Russian on my own for the first time. We wandered back to our lovely hostel and sat in the garden to drink wine before dinner. As it turns out, I really must learn to say "not sweet" or the like in Russian as my moment of language glory was dashed by the fact I bought a wretchedly horrid sweet dessert wine... It was red!
The next day we accepted it was unlikely to find fossils, as we'd pretty throughly scoured a large area, and instead we asked for directions to some petroglyphs. The four of us set off across the river and through beautiful apricot and apple orchards all in bloom. The day was sunny and perfect and the views increasingly spectacular. We passed farms and summer herding tents as well as the associated flocks. Higher we went through deep red rocks (still no fossils), and into spruce and juniper forests, all the while following and crossing a mountain stream. Our hand drawn directions grew harder and harder to follow and eventually we decided we had to turn around. Despite no petroglyphs or fossils it was still one of the more spectacular hikes I've had in a while.
Our final full day we walked to the plane memorial and down by the lake. There are a huge variety of rocks on the beaches and aquamarine water. We saw people rowing on the lake, but few tourists as the season is still early. The next morning was the towns Victory Day celebration, so we watched school children march in groups and salute veterans and then some pretty hilarious dancing. The ceremonies were neat and very respectful for the surprising amount of veterans the small town had! We caught a taxi back to Bishkek (thanks to Kyle doing some bargaining on the highway!) and made it back to Bishkek.